


03; Passage

by takesushi (ahase)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-16
Updated: 2011-08-16
Packaged: 2017-10-22 17:07:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/240397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ahase/pseuds/takesushi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He is the ship, her Helmsman, and he thinks he detects (through the constant buzz of feedback in his consciousness) in her voice a note that was never meant to be there, never meant to be heard.</p>
            </blockquote>





	03; Passage

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea why I wrote this. Product of a slow day at work.

_One hour, fourty five seconds._

They make him watch the execution, start to finish. Restrained and insulated and kinetically blocked as he is, he does little more than clench teeth and look on. Feigned stoicism, and he reels as if struck when the Sufferer howls his last.

 

 _One day, fifteen hours and thirty seconds._  
The pilot's station is teeming, turmoil and business in one, the Condesce's crewmembers bustling, slinging orders and acknowledgments over throat-tearing screams. Greatest pilot in the history of her Condescension's personal fleet they say; installation scheduled to be completed before dawn. The greatest gift the rebellion could offer, this pyrotechnic display of red and blue and searing violets. (Harmless, prodigal strength a mere pittance against the safe-guards of the pilot's system and the bio connections weaving into his spinal structure.) They say he should be proud, should be overwhelmed with gratitude for the honour of serving their Empire as intimately as he will.

He doesn't stop screaming for another day, when his throat gives out and the connections finally fuse with his nervous system and make their home in the base of his neck, intertwined with his spine like a red lover's embrace.

 

 _Four perigrees, seventy eight hours and fifteen minutes._  
The Condesce is speaking. Praises of his ability, mastery over his ship. (Hers, always hers, never any way around it everything was hers.) He does not see her expressions, truth present or not. Ocular nerves disabled, sight an unneeded hindrance with the direct feed of the ship's data and records into his headset, and the headset directly into brainmatter. He is the ship, her Helmsman, and he thinks he detects (through the constant buzz of feedback in his consciousness) in her voice a note that was never meant to be there, never meant to be heard.

Admiration, and the touch of fingers against his skin and if it were possible for him to flinch he would. The touch becomes a caress, a warm palm against the charged surface of his cheek and for the first time since his installation he knows nothing but confusion.

 

 _Seven sweeps, one perigree, ninety two hours._  
She visits once each perigree, official visits and inspections, a retinue of deckhands and ceremonial threshecutioners, cavalreapers, high-ranking seadwellers that rattle with each movement with their medals and armour and the egos too great to fully behold this lowly, simple, powerful pilot. Disruption to routine, sentry and patrol schedules interrupted, gaps that must be filled and compensated for, habit and routine by then to make up for those lacks. She never stays long, long enough to parade, to impress on rust-blooded soldiers that this is still her ship, still her property, still in the palm of her hand. He is neither glad when she comes, nor when she leaves.

He only feels when she returns in the late hours, when the rest of the ship is down, silent, personnel within his station retired for those precious few hours. (They ceased monitoring his behavior after a sweep, after it was dead certain he wouldn't break protocol again and again and again as he had before, when he had embraced resignation.) He knows she's there, beyond the unblinking eye of surveillance feed, from footsteps down his corridor, soft and sure and furtive all at once. Knows she's with him by the whisper of cloth on skin, hair over shoulders, the soft purr of her breath. Oftentimes, he feels rather than hears the surface of water broken, ripples against the living system he's melded with. Sometimes she's silent, sometimes she speaks, and she always touches when she can. A hand to his face, fingers threading through hair, tracing the line of his throat, jugular, windpipe.

She could end him so easily but they both know she won't. So he resigns himself, and he pretends it doesn't hurt, excite, ignite confusion and something more in the pit of his stomach when he feels lips against his.

 

 _Forty two sweeps, nine perigrees, three hours._  
He should be dead, by all rights retired and disposed of. He isn't. His lifespan was due to have ended, to have terminated completely some twenty sweeps prior.  
It hasn't.  
Had he the will to, he would have screamed. Had he the mind to, he would have protested. Had he the pride necessary, he would have cast it aside to plead, to beg. He holds none of those, hasn't for sweeps on end.  
He is Her Helmsman, and old memory clung to so hard for so long begins to slip.

 

 _??? sweeps, ??? perigrees, ??? hours._  
Her word is law, and when She commands he undertake a task that meant his certain death, he does not question. He is her Helmsman, her battleship, his duty to Empire and it's Empress.  
The ship answers to his every command. It is his body and he, it's mind. When they make the jump, that nigh-impossible event (so many ships lost in trying, none else could imitate what they achieve), he wonders if the hulk screams with him. Nerves more bioware and living wire than flesh burn, and he fancies, for a fleeting moment, that he can see the flashes of red and blue that is his exalted station, and not through the mad static flicker of a failing surveillance system.

  
The last he hears, before feeds cut and streams of data cease, before everything shorts out in one painful, searing, relieving blast, is his name on Her lips, and for once since he became Her Condesce's pilot, he is glad. He is her Helmsman, and nothing more.


End file.
